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Signs of Change By Ilyssa Simsek
“Nora Matthews: art-
ist, perfectionist, writer, and deaf. Never to hear words or the beauty of sound.”
Maybe that’s how the rest of the world sees me maybe it isn’t. I see myself differently through the eyes of an artist. How I see it is that even though most people express themselves though words they also express themselves through how they look and act. Each person has their own way of doing things, their own style. I express that style through drawing making every person around me their own character. In a lot of types of cartooning the artist usually emphasizes different features
of a person such as the eyes, nose, or lips. Whenever I look at someone, whether they’re
a friend, a relative or even a perfect stranger I think of how I would draw them how I would express them, and how that af- fects who they are. Their body motions are my words and their styles are my sounds
I was drawing in my bed- room when the doorbell rang. My mom came into my room to tell me to come down. She ran to the front door quickly her light brown sandals falling softly on the hardwood oor. She opened the door to see my best friend Claire ready for our sleepover that night. Steadily trying to bal- ance her sleeping bag, purse Blackbird Review
and suitcase that looked like
it had been stuffed with a baby elephant; she walked into the house trying her hardest not to fall over. I ran down from the stairway to help her, uneasily taking the suitcase that probably weighed twice as much as me. “Nora” my mother signed,” why don’t you bring Claire’s things up to your room?” I nodded and lifted the gigantic suitcase up our long staircase. Claire walked behind me slowly, bringing herself up step by step. When we reached my room I put her things to the side than signed, “so what do you want to do?”
she wrote fast I could tell she really had a lot on her mind.
We ate popcorn and watched movies with subtitles so I could understand what was going on. After a while Claire turned to me and sighed “I have an idea!”
“Fine” I motioned walk- ing over to my desk chair as Claire happily began opening her case of eye shadow.
Claire did know sign lan- guage but not as well as my par- ents and tutors, so it took her a little while to take out her small pad of paper and a pen. Claire and I almost had our own sys- tem, since she was still learning parts of sign language Claire had a hard time signing exactly what she meant to say. She could say simple things like yes or no and easy nouns but decided until she knew more she would write on pieces of paper to tell me if she had something long to say. I on the other hand kept signing and hoped that eventually she would get used to most of the signs I tended to use a lot.
After Claire was done I walked into the bathroom and looked at my face. She was kind of right about the makeup but not very. My eyes looked a little larger but not enough that you could really tell, and my lips
did look partly darker, but noth- ing seemed very different about me. My eyes were a dark deep brown that from far away could be confused as black. If my face was made up of cartoon features than my nose is would almost be like a long loop compared to my small lips that I could draw sim- ply with three thin lines. I guess my eyes would have be a kind of a Marvel comic’s style but more narrow and straight like DC. My body however could never be compared with DC or Marvel characters; it would probably look like an anime body but at- ter and less curvy. I would draw
Today Claire took a lot of time writing down what she wanted to say and even though
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Finally she showed me the paper that read: “Nora, today I really want to try to give you
a makeover! I know I’ve been bugging you for months but I really want to do it today!”
Once I was nished read- ing I looked up at her. If I could have drawn her I would show her as a sad puppy that you beg your parents to bring home. Her bottom lip was slumped over
in a pout and her eyes seemed to icker with a strangeness of what seemed to be hope.